WotC Dungeons & Dragons Fans Seek Removal of Oriental Adventures From Online Marketplace

[Paul Farquhar]

When I was a child I saw the movie "Our dinosaur is missing", where the Chinese are the no-too-smart antagonists. Today it wouldn't be politically correct, but after watching it I didn't become a sinophobic. Should this old movie to be totally banned, or only would be enough a previous disclaimer?

The BBC no longer shows that movie. Hasn't done for a while. The Christopher Lee Fu Manchu films have been shown on UK TV (not BBC) with disclaimers attached.

How do you know you are not sinophobic?

 

[Chaosmancer]

I think we all accept the truth that products will not be available for purchase in perpetuity. But there's a difference between something going out of print due to lack of popularity and being removed from circulation because some people don't like the contents. And truly we live in a wondrous age! You can actually access most of Marvel and DC's legacy works because they've been digitized and placed online. (I have better access to 1st edition material today than I did in 1994.)

However, we all recognize that some of their legacy content does not reflect the values of DC today. Some older content may reflect ethnic, racial, and gender prejudice that were common in the United States at the time. Those depictions were wrong then as they are wrong today.

No, arguments that rely on reductio ad absurdum cannot be taken seriously. Nobody is demanding or expecting copyright holders to make their products available for purchase in perpetuity.

The same can be argued about DC and Marvel's digital collection. Should we petition those companies to make their products unavailable? How many older movies and television shows?

Are Marvel and DC selling access to their old works? I wasn't aware they had them, I thought most of the old stuff was in the form of digital libraries, and I believe it was Mercurius who stated that Libraries aren't enough (could be wrong) to prevent this from being censorship, because they could be trivially taken down.

And this is where I had to start asking, what then would not be censorship? If a company stops selling a product, is it censorship? You menioned old movies and TV shows, but I know for a fact that there has been a lot of media I have been unable to find in the past. I was trying to find the movie "Tokyo Godfathers" a few years back, and I never could. I heard it was an incredibly moving movie. Was I censored because I couldn't find it?

If no, if "not selling" a product isn't censorship, then we have to move to the next step. The why. Is it suddenly censorship if someone demands the product be taken down? I remember a journalism class I took where we discussed photography and mutliple cases where women demanded that printed ads and articles be discontinued and pulled, because they featured the women, but the women had never consented to be photographed. The one that sticks out was an older woman standing in the window of her home, taken from outside the home. Were they demanding censorship?

What about a biography written about a famous person, including excerpts from their personal journal. A journal the author had purchased from a thief on the internet. If the celebrity demands the book be pulled and not sold with their personal information in it, is that censorship?

What if that biography alleges libelous material towards the famous individual? Is pursuing a Libel case against the author censorship?

And as we drill down, we find that it is only likely to be called censorship when it involves not selling a product, because there were complaints about offensive content towards a group of people, or when presenting true facts and not libel about an individual. But, I also have to wonder if age and notoriety play a role in this. Can I censor Plato's Civilization in any meaningful way? It is a book that has been read, discussed, and allegorically presented for millenia. I might be able to censor it in a small section of the world, but it would be trivially easy for someone to order a copy from somewhere else and have it delivered. And since it has been reprinted by so many publishers, it would be such a monumental task to even attempt to find all the "copies" of it. Or, what if I wanted to censor an obscure song? Something that no one is listening to, no one is playing, and that the majority of people wouldn't even recognize the name of? Can you even censor something like that?



I'm going a little hard into this, but this is the fundamental problem I'm seeing. People are arguing Kwan was calling for censorship, and that this will begin a great tide of censoring all media forever, but realistically, he was asking they stop selling a relatively unknown book. From his perspective, it might have been similar to asking a record seller to stop selling Carl Czerny's third most popular work.

Censorship is a serious issue, it is something which should be taken seriously, but I think people are so sensitive to it, that they are jumping at anything that even resembles it, and taking very extreme positions that I don't know if they've fully thought through the implications of.

 

[MGibster]

Are Marvel and DC selling access to their old works? I wasn't aware they had them, I thought most of the old stuff was in the form of digital libraries, and I believe it was Mercurius who stated that Libraries aren't enough (could be wrong) to prevent this from being censorship, because they could be trivially taken down.

DC and Marvel have both been selling access to their back catalog for years now. As for whatever Mercurius may have written, I can't really address that. Do you think it would be appropriate to ask that DC stop selling Wonder Woman because of the unfortunate depictions of African Americans and Asians in the 40s and 50s? Should we petition Penguin Press to stop selling the works of H.P. Lovecraft because of his harmful depictions of African Americans and others throughout many of his works?

And this is where I had to start asking, what then would not be censorship? If a company stops selling a product, is it censorship? You menioned old movies and TV shows, but I know for a fact that there has been a lot of media I have been unable to find in the past. I was trying to find the movie "Tokyo Godfathers" a few years back, and I never could. I heard it was an incredibly moving movie. Was I censored because I couldn't find it?

I have already addressed this and see no need to continue down this particular line of discussion.

I'm going a little hard into this, but this is the fundamental problem I'm seeing. People are arguing Kwan was calling for censorship, and that this will begin a great tide of censoring all media forever, but realistically, he was asking they stop selling a relatively unknown book. From his perspective, it might have been similar to asking a record seller to stop selling Carl Czerny's third most popular work.

How well known the work is doesn't have any bearing on the discussion. But this strikes me as somewhat amusing, asking for OA to be removed he's only made it more popular. The Streisand effect at work.

Censorship is a serious issue, it is something which should be taken seriously, but I think people are so sensitive to it, that they are jumping at anything that even resembles it, and taking very extreme positions that I don't know if they've fully thought through the implications of.

I don't think I'm taking an extreme position here. When people want to ban Harry Potter or Heather Has Two Mommies from public libraries I'm not too keen on that even if those books are available elsewhere.

 

[Voadam]

For all the people upset at Daniel Kwan, here is his response about WotC adding a disclaimer.

No that was his response to the twitter announcement about the disclaimer and unnamed "other steps that are being taken to address a legacy of ethnic, racial, and gender prejudice in some old products."

Here was his response to the disclaimers:


And then

The disclaimer isn't even visible on a full-screen web page.

"Thanks for giving us money! If you scroll all the way down, you'll see that we feel real bad about it."

 

[Mercurius]

I don't know, because our hobby has changed, is changing, and will change again. However, I don't think that we should be afraid of examining our relationship as consumers, writers, and publishers to the skeletons and zombies that have been left festering for so long in D&D's closets, especially if we are truly committed to an inclusive hobby.

I think that we should stop worrying about "where do we draw the line in the sand?" There is no line. The line is artificial and mutable. It attempts to stifle the fluid development of the game by creating an artificial line that gamers can safely hide behind or rally around without fear that they will be swept away by the tides and rising ocean. It's also an argumentative tactic that attempts to say that if a clear line can't be drawn, then the idea in question is somehow without merit, which is fairly absurd. And so often it is framed as a parade of imaginary horrors. The "impassable line" has been redrawn in the sand so many times by now by people worried about "what's next?" and it's just pointless to do so again. Let the critical conversations about the hobby transpire without worrying about the magical line of warding that puts the slippery slope to a halt.

I also think that it's more important for us to sympathetically and respectfully listen to critical voices in our hobby, particularly from marginalized identities, who are telling us how this content is harmful, insensitive, and offensive. I think that it's more important for us as gamers to consider how our consumption of these products and our use of certain cultural tropes in our games perpetuates harmful stereotypes and ideologies about people, even if we do not intend harm. I think that our ethical priority and emphasis should be on people rather than products. We should be more worried about whether we are doing a good job with these things than the slippery slope or where we draw the line.

None of which I have a problem with...to a point. I mean, of course there is no line, culture changes, and all voices should be listened to. But that doesn't mean that all demands should be catered to. There is still a point that WotC should say, "I hear you and we'll try to do better now and in the future, but we're going to take a different route and here's why..."

I and others have been doing just that, but the repeated response is some variation of, "You're tone-deaf and don't care about marginalized voices." Meaning, it is a one thing to listen, quite another to given into demands, especially when those demands may end up being counter-productive and cause more harm than good (like removing OA from availability).

I think WotC's disclaimer is enough, as far as OA and legacy products are concerned. Their focus should be on future products, not dredging endlessly through the past. Let the past stand and move forward.

 

[Mercurius]

If they let Oriental Adventures continue being published, then the next book they may be pure Yellow Peril. Slippery slopes are an actual thing, right?

Yes, they are a thing, but let's use some discernment. The likelihood of that is basically zero. The likelihood that discontinuing OA would lead to other books being discontinued is far greater.

 

[Mercurius]

Two things

1) I was talking about Banning books. As you said, there are levels of censorship. Banning is one level and the level I do not think that is practical to reach.

2) If "removing from availability" is censorship and should be prevented, then we have a big problem. Because there are many many many things being censored. There are many products and books that are no longer sold or easily available. I can't access most of Marvel and DCs legacy works. Or EC comics. The work of Eclipse comics or Wildstorm comics?

Or, what about old videogames? I remember the Xenosaga game I got was amazing, but in trying to get the second one in the series, I found out I needed to buy it on the second hand market for over $500. Many times I've been watching youtube videos about very famous series from Nintendoe and hearing them say that such and such game "was never released to the US". Is that not censorship then, if Japan never pushed to spend the money to make those games constantly available?

And, if this is all censorship, do we have a moral duty to track down the copyright holders of these works and demand they start making them available for sale? No matter the cost or burden to themselves?


To me, this is the issue. You can't reasonably expect every company to always sell every product they ever made. When demand drops below a certain point, then you have to have the option of cutting that product. And, there is no reason to believe that that action is censorship. And Kwan was asking for them to stop selling a 35 year old product, a product that most companies would not be selling do to the incredibly low demand.

I don't think these have much to do with OA, though. First of all, it is a PDF and requires no up-keep to remain available. Removing it would be entirely due to pressure from offended parties.

Secondly, the reason OA is available now is because in 2014, WotC decided to be as inclusive as possible in terms of the D&D community, and made old products available. I remember many people--players of older editions--being quite pleased by this, feeling that they were being invited back into the fold.

 

[Umbran]

Pretty sure I covered that! As I wrote, demanding that things that offend you not be said - that's freedom of expression. It's also censorship, but it's still an expression.

Demands that things must be said are also censorship.

The statement in all of this that isn't censorship is, "Let WotC listen to its customers, and do what it wants."

 

[Weiley31]

Still hasn't gotten that sequel made though, did it?

IIRC, the sequel is still coming and they have I think five or six more movies planned.

 

[Weiley31]

Can we all agree that no matter how bad OA may or may not be (I just think it's bad) it has one thing going for it.

No Kender. That's an improvement over some D&D books.

I know EXACTLY what to add to my Mist of Akuma campaign when I decide to do it.